We are extremely proud to be one of the area’s fastest growing hockey programs. We anticipate very few open spots on our Ice Dogs teams next year and we expect significant interest in those spots.
Our team’s philosophy is to maximize individual player development through skills-based practices in a positive atmosphere. Our practices are designed and run by an NHL skating and skill coach and other professional coaches to work on the most important aspects of player development.
For all teams we emphasize game like situations with maximum pace, repetitions, and puck touches to accelerate player development. We carry less players on the roster to increase the number of puck touches each skater gets in a practice and more ice time in games. Our goalies can easily face more than 300+ shots per practice and included in our goalie tuition are GDS Elite Goaltending weekly lessons, who are located in our building.
The families in our program prioritize learning, sportsmanship and fun along with long term athletic-development, effort, and accountability. Our measurement of success is not to just produce good hockey players but rather to cultivate respectful, hard-working, collaborative, and confident young adults. If you have any questions, please email tryouts@microicehockey.com and complete our Prospective Player Form. Thank you.
Our mite teams focus on building confidence, creativity, growing a love for the game and having fun. We utilize competitive battle drills to teach play with the puck, including puck carrying, stickhandling, playmaking, passing and shooting. The mite years are intended to develop core hockey skills that will serve as a foundation for future hockey development.
Our older "VHL" teams play in the Valley Hockey League against local town and club teams, from A level to AAA level. We have specifically chosen the VHL for league play due to its incomparably balanced parity of teams and close geographic proximity of games. It ensures our VHL teams play teams at their same skill level and without traveling more than an hour for any game. The development focus for our older teams is competitive game situation drills and skills development together with power and agility skating instruction. These teams practice weekly both at Micro Ice as well as on full ice at other local rinks.
Goalies get an additional weekly practice run by Mike Buckley’s GDS. More info on Ice Dog Goalies
Our Selects teams are birth-year based teams comprised of players who wish to pursue a higher level of hockey. The focus of the model is on advanced level hockey skills and skating instruction for AAA/Elite players looking to continue their hockey and athletic development. Our Selects teams play a largely independent game schedule of 30-40 games against other New England AAA/Elite club teams as well as annual marquee tournaments including CCM Invitationals. This game model gives our program greater control over the level of competition we play to ensure we consistently play teams at the right, high level.
Goalies get an additional weekly practice run by Mike Buckley’s GDS. More info on Ice Dog Goalies
Tournament Play: All teams are also eligible for play in local and/or travel tournaments. Tournaments are a great opportunity for our teams to play additional competitive games and bond as a group and community. Typically team families determine which tournament(s) they wish to participate in themselves and costs of tournaments and any travel are born by the families.
